Passing The Torch---Let’s Learn To Pass It Gracefully Before It Incinerates Us. I got some food for thought this morning from &goodvillager who raised the question of whether the world might be better off under a matriarchy, with women in charge. So-called “holy” books have provided the justification for the creation and continuation of the current patriarchal structure of the world. However, there is very little evidence that power, and the reasons for wanting it, are gender specific. In fact, literature from the bible to fairy tales to modern advertising provide ample evidence to the contrary. I know I’m not going to earn any popularity points for saying this out loud, but one of the main driving forces behind the quest for power is sex. We all have our time in the sun as we bloom with youth and beauty and the power of desirability. As we age, we lose that power, and if we are gracious, we accept this as a fact of life and pass that torch to the next generation while giving thanks for the ways in which our lives were enriched for having enjoyed that temporary gift. But we are not graciously passing that torch, as the multi-billion dollar anti-aging and erectile dysfunction medication industries clearly illustrate. As for women being immune to the corrupting influence of power, I can refute this suggestion with a single phrase from a fairy tale “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest one of all?”. The asker of this question, a queen, seeks to destroy any woman younger and more beautiful who would challenge her title and all the privileges that go with it. Rather than passing the torch, those who seek to circumvent the natural order of things seek to impoverish and destroy those who may replace them in the sexual arena. We like to think of ourselves as a higher order of being, but we’re really not much different from the old silver-backed gorilla stockpiling all the bananas to attract young females who would otherwise be more attracted to the handsome, virile and still-agile younger males. That’s the real reason old men send all the young men off to war—so they’ll have more impoverished young females to control with their stockpile of bananas. I can see no reason to believe that if women were in power, they wouldn't do the same. Perhaps if we came to terms with our own mortality and stopped treating death as a dirty word, we could then enjoy the compensations that old age affords like gratitude, respect, rest and relaxation. Really, though, in our quest to keep that torch, what are we passing to the next generation that they can respect and be grateful for? Our desperate attempts to hold onto that torch rather than pass it to its rightful recipients will result in our being completely scorched—as well as the earth we depend on for survival.